Choosing a business intelligence software 1

[ColumbiaIS]

Our company is in search of a business intellegence software to integrate between all departments. I work in the beverage distribution industry and was curious if there were any software specifically designed for this industry in the business intelligence realm?

 

[aalmeida]

?? I realy can't tell if any specifics exist to you industry, but the most efective BI SW I have seen was developed internaly as a company efort that tacles specifict company's needs.
I have not seen yet good of the box solutions that you could just apply, and the time and cost spent to customize a of the shelf product is about the same of building from the ground up.
Two advantage I see on building from the ground up is Company's culture oriented and Builds Company's Knowledge of the bussines, also fast customizations.
These are my two cents on this, I hope I have helped. AL Almeida
NT/DB Admin
"May all those that come behind us, find us faithfull"

 

[ADB1]

I know of two major beverage companies that use Cognos Products within the UK.

 

[ColumbiaIS]

Thanks adambmw! That is the exact software we are looking at. Which beverage companies use Cognos? Have you heard anything about Dimensional Insights DI-Diver?

 

[ADB1]

Guinness UDV and Interbrew both use cognos products. And no I haven't heard of DI-Diver.

 

[keefy]

When selecting a BI tool for an enterprise wide solution, there is typically no particular product suited to any particulr industry (except perhaps Essbase's financial calculation capabilities).

I have developed BI applications for a number of years, and every time it comes to product selection time (and I've used most of them - Cognos, Microstrategy, Brio etc.), it all comes down to the same thing - namely your data, and what you are looking to do with your data. Different software products have particular selling points (querying speed, ability to perform complex calculations, drill down capability etc.) - so the question I would put to you ColumbiaIS is - what type of reporting system are you looking for? A fixed "canned report" application, or a more dynamic exploratory tool?

There's a lot more to it, of course, but once you have a clear idea of the application you are looking to develop, then hopefully it can thin out the list of potential vendors (because who needs to see 30 demos of basically the same thing...?)

 

[aalmeida]

Here is an article on the subject:
USE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TO DUMP BAD CUSTOMERS AND TARGET PROMOTIONS
Business intelligence tools can transform your company's operational
data into high-value information you can use to boost your bottom line.
Find out how BI can streamline both your customer base and your
promotional efforts.

http://click.online.com/Click?q=c7-KG43QLPBHruxB48NWwhmTj4khPZR

AL Almeida
NT/DB Admin
"May all those that come behind us, find us faithfull"

 

[BobWard]

Choose Cognos at you r own peril, the product set is disjointed and requires IT skills to use. Take a lok at BusinessObjects a more complete and compact solution that which can empower the business to build reports and adhoc queires. Cognos does have better olap support but thats about it !!

 

[ADB1]

The new cognos Series 7 products will (I believe) pull everything within the tool set together.

In my opinion, Business Objects does have better ad hoc reporting, but on the other hand, cognos has a much more powerful olap solution. It very much depends on what you are trying to do.

I also wouldn't say you need IT Skills to administer Cognos or Business Objects, both companies support and training are very good. They are the same as any product, you need IT skills to install windows!

 

[nlim]

Here're some relatively independent comparisons for you to start with:

http://www.olapreport.com

http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%3D1474%26a%3D7641,00.asp

As many have mentioned before, validate your requirements BEFORE looking at BI vendors. Try to break them into
architectural requirements:
- performance,
- # total users and concurrency
- security,
- amount of data (raw data, and how many dimensions)
- administration
- monitoring for reliability
- deployment issues (web plugins, client installs, migration from dev to test to production etc)
- total cost of ownership (software, hardware, developers, maintenance team, training)

User requirements:
- types of analysis required (simple sums or running averages)
- types of reports required (formating etc),
- query types (user selections, canned or full ad-hoc)
- usability
- other misc : writeback, email distribution, links to operational systems

The BI space is consolidating, here are some major players in no particular order:
cognos, business objects, microstrategy, hyperion.

 

[schold]

Check this, and you can also find a vendor comparision on the same site.

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/011004/415feat1_guide.shtml

Hope it helps.

 

[Guest_imported]

ColumbiaIS,
I may be a little to this conversation but do have a question/comment. Where do you plan to bring the data together for analysis? If you don't already have one, I recommend exploring a 3rd normal form EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) to bring together ALL the data (not summarized but detail) data from each respective BU. The business value comes from the detail data. The EDW should be the pool from which you attach your current flavor of the day BI tool (Cognos, Bus Obj, MicroStrategy, Brio or others). Look at MPP architectures to support this type of strategic initiative. The #1 beverage company in the world uses this architecture/approach - you can guess who I'm talking about. So does 3M, Fed Ex & others. Hope this helps.

 

[Marketeer1]

Cognos is awfully expensive. My company used ECSDTool -

http://www.ecsdtool.com

and loves it.